Page 55 of Closing the Distance

I choke out a laugh, and then he’s helping me put my clothes back to rights. He holds my hand as we walk downstairs and find Danae relaxing on the couch with her phone in hand. My cheeks flush for making her wait so long, but she just looks up at us with a knowing grin and asks, “Ready to go?”

“Yeah.” I kiss Ty, not acknowledging his wolfish grin when my eyes flare at my taste still on his tongue, and then walk out the door.

“Bye, Ty,” Danae says, tossing back a wave and following me.

“Drive safe, Danae. You’ve got precious cargo in that car,” he calls out, leaning against the doorframe looking all casual and relaxed in his faded jeans and T-shirt. The guys are meeting at Romel’s house while the girls are hanging out at Dom and Alayna’s. Once the guys got wind that Alayna wanted to have a girls’ night with me and Danae, they were planning their own.

“Do you know what the guys are doing tonight?” I ask Danae as she drives us to Alayna’s.

“Didn’t Ty tell you?”

My cheeks heat. “He probably would’ve if I’d asked, but we were a little preoccupied.”

She laughs, the sound light and airy. “Oh girl, I’ve been there. Most days I’m still there. It’s a wonderful place to be,” she says with wistfulness.

I can’t help smiling. “Yeah, it is.”

She shakes her head as if shaking away a memory probably similar to the one going around in my mind of what Ty and I were doing ten minutes ago. “The guys are probably going to play board games.”

“Board games? Really? I would’ve imagined they’d have poker nights or something.”

She arches a brow. “Have you not seen Ty’s collection? He’s got a whole closet full of board games. They rotate through some of their favorites, and sometimes he’ll bring one that they’ve never heard of. They do this once a month typically.”

I lean back in the chair. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I never put it together before. The boxes that Ty put in one of the spare rooms. I thought it was sports memorabilia or something.”

“I can’t believe he hasn’t told you about his collection. He’s known for it.”

I can’t either. Especially when I think about how many boxes were in that room. I wonder why he’s never pulled out a board game when we were having a date night in.

A prickle of worry filters through my happy bubble, wondering why he hasn’t shared something that is such a part of him that all his friends know about it—that saboteur looking to remind me nothing good ever lasts in my life.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, hold it for four seconds, then let it go. I’m not going to let those thoughts win. Things are going just fine, better than fine. I’m sure there’s a good reason he didn’t tell me about his love of board games.

We pull up to Alayna’s house, and she opens the door with a pitcher of lemonade in her hand. “I just kicked Dom out to go play with the boys. Come on in, ladies.”

We walk in and follow her back to the patio, and my jaw drops because this has to be the nicest patio I’ve ever seen. It’s like something out of a magazine. A huge deep-green lawn spreads out with a great view of Los Angeles. There’s a pool on the right, while on the left is a covered patio with thick wooden beams and Edison string lights serving as a canopy under the wooden roof. A plush-looking, cream, L-shaped couch faces a large square firepit. There’s a big-screen TV on the wall, and on the other side is a bar and grill.

“Holy shit,” I whisper, although apparently not quietly enough because Danae laughs.

“That’s what I said the first time I came over too. I’m still getting used to the luxury these guys live in.”

“You didn’t grow up like this?” I ask as we take a seat and Alayna serves us tall glasses of cold lemonade.

“Oh, God no! I was barely making ends meet before I met Gabe. In fact, I’d just been fired from my job when Gabe offered for me to work with him and live in his pool house.”

“You mean the job he was partially responsible for getting you fired from,” Alayna adds with a smile.

Danae shakes her head. “I’ve told him a million times that was not his fault. But it all worked out for the best regardless.” She looks at Alayna. “Same for you and Dom. It’s so good to see you two finally settled down together.”

Alayna looks down at her wedding ring, a serene smile on her face. “Yeah. Kind of funny how just when you’ve given up hope, things start to fall in place exactly as they were supposed to.”

Her words strike a chord in my heart, and before I even realize what I’m doing, the words are tumbling out of my mouth. “That’s how I felt before I met Ty.”

They both turn to me, their attention riveted. I don’t normally open up so easily to other people, but after bonding with them over the past month or two, it almost feels easy to peel back my layers and let them see a little more. Blaire and Ty are the only other people who’ve made me this comfortable, but maybe it’s time to let more people into my circle.

“I was pretty set in my routine and had convinced myself I was fine living a mostly solitary life, and then I met Ty when I was out with my friend Blaire, and…” I’m thrown back to the memory, the way he made me feel, my desperation to leave before he could ruin how perfect the night was. “It was the best night of my life.”

Alayna nibbles her lip and then leans forward as if telling a secret. “You know, from what Dom told me, Ty was wrecked when you were gone the next morning. He said Ty spent every spare moment trying to search for you online. The guys were worried he was one desperate attempt away from hiring a private investigator.”

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